Complaint Review: Drive Financial Services - Dallas Texas

After reading a ton of the other reports about Drive, it's clear I am in for a long nightmare if I can't get my car refinanced quickly. I purchased my car in May 07 from the special finances dept at a Ford dealership. I was not told who the finance company was in advance but that "of course they would be reputable". Yeah right!!

My first bad experience was the initial phone calls welcoming me to the "Drive Family". After having the rep repeat 10 times who he was and why he was calling I finally figured out they were supposed to be my new loan company. Having not received any other communication from the dealership or paperwork in the mail, I told the person I would not give them any information over the phone. He was completely irrate, hung up on me and I continued to have the same conversation with a different person for the next several days.

Once I received my first statement, I was slightly concerned because I had never heard of Drive Financial. But...what was I to do at that point. I do most of my bill paying online so I went to the website to set up my account. When I saw the cheesy website I was again not feeling right about things but figured I was just being overly cautious about purchasing my first car...yes, my first car. The website was completely lame and none of the options worked. To this day I have never been able to get the 'Live Chat' option to work. I believe it's a fake icon and nothing more. The only thing that seems to work on a regular basis is the online payment option...go figure...but the fees are just ridiculous so I would never use that option. I had selected the online statement option when creating my account but once I realized the website didn't work, I wanted to change that option back to paper. Of course I was not able to do that. So I contacted customer service using the email feature on the site. I let them know the site wasn't working and asked if they could please change my statement option back to paper. I included my name and phone # on the email. I received a response back from a no reply email address saying they could not access my account with only my name and that I would need to resend my request. Why couldn't they have just asked me for more account information in the response email instead of making me resend the request?

My next issue came up in November 2007. After reading some of the other reports, it seems November is a busy month for their harrassment and lies. I was called towards the end of the month and told that my payment had not been received. I asked about making a phone payment and when the gal told me the amount of the fees I told her to forget it that I would mail another check. Of course I asked about stopping payment on the lost check and was told that was the best thing to do and it would be noted on my account so if it ever showed up I wouldn't be charged any fees. Obviously a lie.

In December 2007, I was contacted again towards the end of the month saying they hadn't received yet another payment. I told the woman who called that this was ridiculous and my check had been mailed in plenty of time to be received. She told me that due to the holidays they expected to receive most of their payments 10-15 days late. That is completely ridiculous! And if they had this expectation, why are they calling me 2 days after the due date. I don't believe for one minute that they didn't already have my check.

And low and behold, the missing check from November comes back to haunt me in February 2008. The check has mysteriously shown up at their offices and of course they have charged me a $25 fee for the stop payment. I have called several times and everyone is completely rude and incompetent. I have requested supervisors and been hung up on or never received a return phone call. I've made a vain attempt again using the online email option to get results but I don't expect anything to come of it. I tried looking up a corporate number because I was so frustrated and that search is what lead me to the tons of sites and comments similar to this one about all of the fraud this company is and has been committing.

It is so upsetting that there seems to be so many people who have been ripped off by this company, and based on what I've heard, no one has been successful in fighting them. I've personally had enough and am working hard to get results at a higher level. My issues have obviously not escalated to the nightmare of some others, but it seems to be the beginning of the end as many other stories started out similar to mine. And thank you to those of you who commented on not seeing how the payments are posting between principle and interest on the monthly statements. I guess I will start fighting that battle now too.

I did find an article about a farely recent successful class action case, of which I have attached a link. http://www.dpkpr.com/en/rel/?246

The lawyer is a Texas lawyer named Richard Tomlinson (713.627.2100 ext. 101). I don't live in Texas but I think I will contact him since he already has experience with the illegal dealings of this company. Maybe he will have a recommendation on how to proceed or for a lawyer in my area.

Count me in for any class action cases that we can get. I'll also be contacting the consumer beware and crimebusters reporters from the local news in my area. I will be sure to post an update if I am able to get any results.

Monica

Kirkland, Washington

U.S.A.

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